Vineyard & Winery Management Magazine
Cover Story
Bien Nacido Vineyards
Star Grower Market Top-Quality Grapes
Story by Tina Caputo, editor-in-chief
We've all heard about celebrity winemakers, but star grape growers are still something of a rarity-at least in the consumer world. One of the industry's most notable exceptions is Bien Nacido Vineyards, the Santa Maria grower whose name appears on more than 100 high-end wines from producers like Au Bon Climat, Foxen Winery, Gary Farrell Winery, Lane Tanner and Qupé.
The grower's celebrity status became obvious to me last month when I joined Bien Nacido vineyard manager Chris Hammell for dinner at a Santa Maria restaurant. As we tasted through an array of vineyard-designated wines, a server approached our table with a request. The couple at the next table is a fan of Bien Nacido, she told -Hammell, and they'd like to meet you.What made the experience so remarkable was the fact that Bien Nacido Vineyards doesn't produce a single bottle of wine.
This level of fame didn't happen by accident. Bien Nacido's barrier-busting reputation is the result of a carefully thought-out plan: Step one, plant and grow the highest quality grapes; step two, make sure the world knows it.
A Pedigreed History
Located in the Santa Maria appellation of Santa Barbara County, the Bien Nacido property was part of a 9,000-acre Spanish land grant made to Tomas Olivera in 1837. Olivera sold Rancho Tepusquet, as it was then called, in 1855 to his son-in-law Don Juan Pacifico Ontiveros. Over the years the Ontiveros heirs divided up the property until only about 1,400 acres remained.
In 1969 the Millers-a fifth-generation California farming family-bought the property. Brothers Stephen (Steve) and Bob Miller also purchased an adjacent parcel which had been part of the original land grant, and reunited the two properties as a single 2,000-acre ranch.
Though the Millers had previously grown avocados and lemons in Ventura County, they had no particular crop in mind for Rancho Tepusquet. However, in the early 1970s the family realized that the property's soils and the region's climate would be ideal for growing wine grapes.
The Bien Nacido ranch should be a desert, but because of the two east-west transverse mountain ranges-the San Rafael and Santa Ynez-that draw in the maritime influence from the nearby Pacific Ocean, the vineyard has one of the longest growing seasons in the state. It's situated on the southwest-facing curve of a coastal hill formation, with good sun exposure and poor, well-draining soils of sand, chalk and marine loam. Designated as Region 1, the vineyard is cooled by morning fog and afternoon ocean breezes. Summer temperatures tend to be mild and even-around 74°F during the day and 53°F at night-and rainfall usually ranges from 12 to 14 inches per year.
Armed with this information the Millers decided to devote the ranch to premium Burgundian grape varieties.
"The climate of the time was mostly geared toward quantity," says Steve Miller's son Nicholas, who handles marketing and public relations for Bien Nacido Vineyards. "From the beginning, they wanted to create a vineyard that was top quality, not just a commodity."
When it came time to plant in 1973, the Millers purchased certified stock from UC Davis to make sure they were getting virus- and disease-free plant material. Rather than using wooden posts, they invested in steel stakes. The Millers were also early adopters of drip irrigation. "Every step they took they wanted to take it with the thought of doing what's best for the vineyard," Miller says.
They originally planted pinot noir from Pommard and Martini clones and chardonnay from clone 4. All varieties were own-rooted and primarily planted to east-west orientation with 12-foot spacing.
Once the vineyard plans were set in motion, the Millers gave their operation a name that would reflect their vision. In Spanish, "Bien Nacido" means "well born"-as in pedigreed. "The fruit here from the very beginning was groomed to be top-notch," Miller says.
Beyond the Vineyard
It wasn't enough for the Millers to plant and maintain a top-quality vineyard; they also wanted to consider what happens to the fruit once it leaves the ranch.
"Most of it went to the North Coast because that's where the wineries were," Miller explains. "In good years (wineries) loved Bien Nacido, but in bad ones they wouldn't return phone calls." To solve that problem, Bob and Steve Miller worked to incubate the wine industry in Santa Barbara County-thus creating local demand for their fruit.
"They decided to partner with small artisan winemakers who would really champion the area and the vineyard," Miller says. The family recruited Qupé winemaker Bob Lindquist to set up operation on the ranch, and Lindquist convinced Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat to share the space. Bien Nacido built the facility to the winemakers' specifications, allowing Lindquist and Clendenen to spend their money on grapes and barrels. Since then two more wineries-Ambullneo Vineyards and Tantara Winery-have taken up residence at Bien Nacido, leasing property and purchasing grapes from the Millers.
As another way to foster the local wine industry the family launched two custom crush facilities: Central Coast Wine Services in Santa Maria and Paso Robles Wine Services in Paso Robles. The idea, Miller says, was to provide services-from case-goods storage to bottling to winemaking-to help local wineries function and thrive.
Rethinking the Vineyard
Today Bien Nacido includes more than 700 vineyard acres, with about 300 acres planted to chardonnay and 250 to pinot noir. The ranch also includes smaller plantings of syrah, pinot blanc, merlot, refosco, tocai friulano, petit verdot, and many other varieties.
When the Millers planted the property more than 30 years ago few people were growing grapes in the region, so deciding which varieties to plant-and where-was not an exact science. "It's amazing how much they actually did get right," says vineyard manager Chris Hammell, who worked at Cambria and David Bruce wineries before joining Bien Nacido in 2000.
Chardonnay and pinot noir turned out to be ideal varieties for the ranch, but less suitable varieties-like cabernet sauvignon-are now being phased out as part of a block-by-block redevelopment of the property's older vineyards.
About half of the vines are still own-rooted, but new plantings are going in on rootstock. "We don't know when Phylloxera will come," Hammell says.
Hammell and his crew are changing row orientations from east-west to north-south for more even sun exposure, and they are tightening up row spacing. In original vineyard rows planted to 12-foot spacing, Hammell has planted new vines between the rows to simulate 6-foot spacing. (This practice has proved to be complicated, since the rows have to be farmed separately.) New rows are being planted at 6-foot by 3-foot or 8-foot by 3-foot spacing. Bien Nacido purchased small John Deere tractors to navigate the new tighter spacing.
Some of the older vines are still on Lyre trellis systems, but everything is now being converted to VSP.
Hammell is working to introduce more sustainable practices into the vineyard, and certain blocks are farmed with organic and biodynamic practices. Owl boxes help keep vineyard critters in check, and the ranch's electronic gates are solar powered. "We work closely with CCVT (Central Coast Vineyard Team) and CAWG with their sustainable programs," Hammell says. "What it basically comes down to is that you use as few chemicals as possible and you utilize the less harsh chemicals when you make the decision to use them. You use different measures to care for the biological life of the soil-through compost teas, cover crops, and things like that."
The vineyard's mix of pinot noir clones-about 14 in total-will remain the same. "I like the variety we have now," Miller says, "and people associate Martini and Pommard with Bien Nacido."
Wines made from Bien Nacido's cool-climate grapes are generally known for their elegance, balanced acidity and purity of fruit, rather than power and intensity.
‘White Glove' Farming
One of the keys to Bien Nacido's success has been its "white glove" approach to farming. The family views the property as a collection of small vineyards (hence the plural "Vineyards" in Bien Nacido's name), each with its own set of practices specified by the winery client.
Most wineries pay by the acre for their fruit instead of by the ton (pinot is farmed at 1-3 tons per acre and chardonnay is farmed at 1.5-4.5 tons per acre). Acreage contracts allow individual clients to specify irrigation, leafing, and fruit-dropping practices. Clients may also request that their blocks be farmed using organic or biodynamic practices.
All fruit is hand-picked, except for 50 acres of chardonnay which is machine harvested at the winery client's request.
Though Bien Nacido's practices are often expensive to execute, clients aren't complaining.
"They've planted the clone we want, the rootstock we want, the spacing we want, and the site we want," says Bob Lindquist of Qupé Winery, who has worked with the grower since 1986. "It's costly to do that, but it's even more costly to go out and buy land and plant it yourself." Lindquist has more than 50 custom-planted acres at Bien Nacido, which go into Qupé's top syrah, rousanne, and chardonnay wines.
"Our customers always make a point of telling me how clean the fruit is that Chris picks, how well he does at giving individual attention and making every one of these customers feel like they're getting the white glove treatment," says Bien Nacido sales and marketing director James Ontiveros.
"Chris (Hammell) has one of the toughest vineyard manager jobs in the state," Miller agrees. "There's no one else who farms the quality that Chris does with that diversity of customer base. For every one of them Bien Nacido is their reserve that they're going to put top price on. This is their baby and they want to be treated like that."
Building a Vineyard Brand
While Steve and Bob Miller preferred to "let the quality of the fruit speak for itself," Nicholas Miller says, Bien Nacido's reputation is also the result of smart marketing.
In 2001, when the Millers hired James Ontiveros, the company began to place more emphasis on brand-building. In addition to directing sales and customer relations, Ontiveros assists with Bien Nacido's marketing and public relations efforts. Nicholas Miller joined the family business in 2004-around the time Bob Miller passed away-after working for a marketing firm in Boston. Miller now directs the company's marketing, public relations, and communications efforts and helps with sales.
"I think the real transition has been in younger people coming in with new ideas," Miller says. "And there's consumer demand for (grower information) that there never was before. I don't think consumers cared as much about the vineyard-even in the early '90s-as they do now."
The building of the Bien Nacido brand is closely tied to the rise of vineyard-designated wines. When the first Bien Nacido-designated wine appeared in 1982, the concept was a novel one. Today the Bien Nacido name appears on more wine labels than any other vineyard, Miller says.
Rather than encouraging this trend, however, Bien Nacido is scaling back. The company currently works with about 35 winery clients. "We're shrinking our customer base and making sure only the top quality is going into (vineyard designates)," Miller says. "We've also declassified a lot of the fruit so it will never go into a Bien Nacido program."
The grower has taken on only about five new clients in the last few years. "Effectively we're sold out," Miller says. "We have a little bit of wiggle room each year with the crop load, but mostly we have a long waiting list."
Vintners who purchase fruit are not necessarily entitled to designate their wines as Bien Nacido, Miller says. "We put it in our contract every year that the wine has to be approved by us if they're going to put it into a vineyard-designated bottle. We want (consumers) to feel that even if they don't recognize the winery if they see the vineyard name on a wine list they can feel pretty confident that they're going to enjoy the wine."
Contracts also dictate that vintners provide Bien Nacido with a couple cases of each vineyard-designated wine for marketing use. This sometimes includes pouring clients' wines at annual consumer events like World of Pinot Noir and Pinot Days.
"We're out there championing our customers-sometimes even more than they are," Ontiveros says. "We've even hosted their distributors. We've done our best to educate people who are out there selling the product. It's been fun for me, because I get to hear what distributors are hearing from retailers and restaurateurs."
Even consumers will sometimes contact Bien Nacido to request a visit. Fans from as far away as Germany and Japan have stopped by the ranch, and one woman recently called in hopes of arranging a visit for her dad's 50th birthday. The ranch isn't open to the public, so Miller will usually try to steer consumers toward events where Bien Nacido will be pouring clients' wines.
The grower's reach into the consumer world is facilitated by an electronic newsletter, sent via San Francisco-based direct marketing company Vertical Response. About 300 people have signed up at consumer events and on Bien Nacido's website (www.biennacidovineyards.com) to receive the quarterly newsletter-written by Miller and Hammell-which includes vineyard updates and information about upcoming events.
In 2006 Bien Nacido released its first "Collector's Case" ($395), a 12-pack of vineyard-designated wines sold through the grower's website and local retailers. "The concept was to show off the ranch," Miller says. "I think we got a huge marketing push through it-we got to go out and tell our story a lot-but it wasn't pulled through the marketplace with incredible speed." In 2007, the Collector's Case was repackaged as a six-pack of wines from the grower's Bien Nacido, French Camp, and Solomon Hills vineyards.
"The kind of marketing I was familiar with was buying and selling grapes, and it was very product-oriented," Ontiveros says. "But Nicholas has just done an amazing job-things like the website wouldn't be in existence if it was under my watch."
Bien Nacido's website includes comprehensive details about the vineyard, from vineyard maps with soil and clone information to biographies and photos of the company's key players. "I can't tell you how much time I used to spend answering questions," Ontiveros says. "Now that information is available on the website."
The site also provides Bien Nacido's clients with critical data, such as Brix and pH levels, at harvest time. This is especially important for wineries located outside the Central Coast region.
But despite all the marketing bells and whistles, Ontiveros says, quality is what keeps Bien Nacido grapes in demand. "At the end of the day the job that Nicholas and I are tasked with doing is easy, because it's just a reflection of the good work our guys do in the vineyard."
Lindquist of Qupé Winery confirms Ontiveros' assertion. "The three things that make a vineyard great are the climate, the soil, and the exposure-and Bien Nacido has all of those things going for it. You can have all those things, but if you're not farming it correctly you're missing the boat. Bien Nacido has always farmed it correctly and put a lot of effort and money into getting great quality."